Recommended for:
Hopeless romantics who pray for Chuck and Blair from Gossip Girl to just get it on for good.

I’m such a huge romantic. 90% of my books have a large chunk of romance in them, and 90% of the movies and songs I listen to involve heartbreak the sweeping of one off their feet. Chain Reaction could have sated my lust for love, and yet, like its prelude, it fell flat in all the important areas.

Luis Fuentes is doing his best to stay on the right path, and when he meets Nikki, the girl with the angelic face and beautiful soul, he thinks his life is finally starting to come together for good. Sure, Nikki has a lot of baggage and doesn’t really trust a “South Sider,” but hey, didn’t his brothers go through that too? Luis thinks he’s got it all figured out, that cocky kid, until the LB comes rolling back into town claiming debt. Suddenly, Luis’s life isn’t so perfect anymore and he’s now trapped in a world of lies, deceit and violence, with not a clue on how to get out.

Sounds familiar, right? Chain Reaction is basically the same thing as its lead ups, but just with different characters and a few plot strings ripped off from Gossip Girl. Elkeles writes clichés like she’s creating them in the first place – she twists the rich, stuck-uppity one, the bad-boy-gang-kid option, the Romeo-and-Juliet scenario, generally respectably – but even so, her writing skills seemed to have disappeared in this installment. This book lacked in pacing, in climax, in characterization, and all because there are only so many times you can run a cliché, and because I’m damn sure Elkeles got lazy with her dialogues.

Truthfully, I didn’t really like Luis. He was everywhere with his emotions and thoughts. He is the shady guy Nikki suspects him to be, and a lot of the time I found myself questioning his motives, which was ridiculous because while doing so I was reading from his POV. Luis wasn’t a very well-rounded character, but then I can also now say that for his brothers too. Because, yeah. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ALEX AND CARLOS? LEGITIMATELY, WHAT THE HELL? When we start off the book, Alex is getting married to Brittany and all is good for the whole wide freaking world. Alex seems cool, as usual, and seems like an ACTUAL MALE HUMAN BEING… which freakishly changes fast. Suddenly all you hear from him are these sappy-ass lines, and then just as snippily, you’re hearing them from tough-guy Carlos too. I got the feeling that Elkeles got stuck in her Hot Boy Wonderland and just decided to ignore how real boys actually speak, because something happened to her male characters that seriously scared me into taking a break from the book.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Simone Elkeles has the ability and potential to write solid main characters. Case in point, Nikki was much stronger and more relatable in comparison to Brittany and Kiara, and I could actually see myself being friends with her. Oh, and while we’re talking about befriending, I think I should mention that I love how Elkeles actually gives the “best friend” space to grow and become something other than “the best friend.” In this chemistry-ridden universe, the best friends get to be best friends, and get to be treated like best friends, and really, that’s truly wonderful because damn it, Elkeles is doing as expected.

Chain Reaction was romantic, but it was more steamy then anything else. I think I like this series so much because when Elkeles talks sex, she doesn’t just tell it, she shows it. Although the scenes were genuinely sappy about 85% of the time, I think that most YA authors could learn something from one of Chain Reactions sexcapades. It was refreshing and fun to simmer in the heat in the chemistry between the characters.

This book – nay, this series - could have been so much more, but this trilogy really did make me happy at points and made me a fan of Elkeles. I’m sad that the Fuentes’ are finished telling stories, because they really did tell riveting ones, but I’m also looking forward to something new. Something very, very new. Please.

Flag Abuse

Flagging a post will send it to the Goodreads Customer Care team for review.
We take abuse seriously in our discussion boards.
Only flag comments that clearly need our attention.
As a general rule we do not censor any content on the site.
The only content we will consider removing is spam,
slanderous attacks on other members,
or extremely offensive content (eg. pornography, pro-Nazi, child abuse, etc).
We will not remove any content for bad language alone, or being critical
of a particular book.